SWAC closes meetings

The big news out of last week’s Southwestern Athletic Conference meetings came Thursday when presidents and chancellors voted to prohibit Southern and Jackson State from this year’s championship football game because of low APR scores.

It wasn’t the only news, however.

A rundown of highlights and changes from the league meetings in Houston:

The SWAC will expand its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments from eight teams to all 10 eligible teams — except in certain cases, like the 2012 men’s tournament.

Southern and Grambling will miss this year’s tournament — also because of low APR scores — so this year’s men’s tournament will include only eight teams.

The women’s tournament will be a 10-team field.

In the past, only the top eight teams qualified for the SWAC tournament. Southern’s men missed the tournament in each of the last two seasons, finishing ninth in 2009-10 and 10th this season.

When conference play begins in basketball, women’s and men’s doubleheaders will begin between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturdays.

The SWAC opted to maintain its “100-percent rule” in baseball, meaning that teams must play all 24 of their divisional games.

In other words, teams must make up games against divisional opponents in cases of rainouts.

The rule is designed to break ties in the conference standings and establish seeds for the SWAC tournament. It was in place last year, but two teams skirted the rule.

At the end of the regular season, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State were supposed to make up a single game that was rained out March 7; that game would have determined whether Valley entered the tournament as the No. 2 East seed or the No. 3 East seed.

The game was canceled, however, after Valley agreed to be the No. 3 East seed.

All-SWAC honors in men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball will be selected by SWAC head coaches only, eliminating sports information directors and media from the process.

Conference golf teams are not allowed to practice or play at the site of the SWAC Championship for up to 30 days prior to the beginning of the championship.